


Let Your Heart Be Light

by Gemmiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bunker Fic, Christmas, DeanCas - Freeform, Destiel - Freeform, Fluff, Human Castiel, M/M, Merry Christmas, claire novak - Freeform, domestic fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:07:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2755571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemmiel/pseuds/Gemmiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Cas gives up his grace to save Dean and eradicate the Mark of Cain, he and Claire move into the bunker. Claire and Cas want to celebrate Christmas, and how can Dean say no to two pairs of pleading blue eyes? Mostly fluff. Spoilers for 10.09.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let Your Heart Be Light

“Claire wants a Christmas tree.”

Dean Winchester turned away from the skilletful of scrambled eggs he was stirring and blinked at Castiel. “A what?”

“A Christmas tree.” Cas padded into the bunker’s kitchen and seated himself at the oaken table. He was, Dean noticed, barefoot, wearing an old Styx t-shirt he’d scavenged from Dean and a pair of jeans. His dark hair stood up in spikes all over the top of his head, and his jawline was covered in dark stubble. He looked so human it made Dean’s heart twist in his chest.

Because Cas _was_ human now. They’d found his stolen angelic grace hidden in plain sight, in Jimmy Novak’s old wedding ring, which Jimmy’s daughter Claire wore on her thumb. Cas had put on the ring and powered up with his own grace... only to sacrifice it all a week later in order to get rid of the Mark of Cain that scarred Dean’s forearm once and for all.

Now Cas was an ordinary human, and he didn’t seem to mind all that much. Dean, on the other hand, was painfully aware of how much Cas had given up to save his unworthy ass. The Mark of Cain had made him into a killer, a _murderer,_ and even before that he sure as hell hadn't been anyone's idea of a saint. But Cas had gladly given up everything to save him anyway.

“We don’t do Christmas,” he said shortly, spinning around and returning to stirring the eggs. “We’ve never done Christmas.”

Cas was undeterred by his repressive tone. “Perhaps it is time you start.”

“Look,” Dean said, stirring the eggs a little more violently than necessary, “I don’t buy into that peace on Earth crap, all right? I mean, we all know there’s no such thing. There’s no peace in Earth or Heaven, and there never will be. Right?”

Behind him, he heard Cas blow out his breath in a sigh. “Now that my friend Hannah is in charge of Heaven,” he said, “I hope things will begin to improve up there. Perhaps peace among the angels is not out of reach. And on Earth—well, there is always strife, but that is part of my Father’s design, I’m afraid. As Sam would say, it's a feature, not a bug.”

“Oh, _that’s_ reassuring.”

“In any event,” Cas went on, ignoring Dean’s sarcasm, “humans have always celebrated the darkest point of the year. Christmas, Yule, Saturnalia… such festivals serve as a reminder that the light will soon come again.”

“Givin' the finger to the darkness, huh?” Dean pulled the frying pan off the burner and spooned eggs onto four plates, adding strips of bacon he’d cooked earlier. Then he brought two plates across for himself and Cas. Sam was out for his morning jog, despite the fact that it was like ten degrees out, and Claire was sleeping in, same as she’d been doing every morning since school let out for winter break. Cas had insisted that they enroll her in school—over Claire’s objections—and to Dean’s surprise, she was doing really well. The kid was smart. But like any other teenager, she was happy to have a break from classes.

Cas dug into his eggs with a very unangelic enthusiasm, and Dean watched him eat. He still couldn’t get used to seeing Cas as a human. Cas had been human once before, of course, but it nevertheless freaked him out to see the former angel doing human things like eating and sleeping and farting. The knowledge that it was all his fault didn’t help.

Cas didn’t seem to notice his introspective gaze. “Exactly,” he answered through a mouthful of eggs. “The lights on the Christmas tree represent the light shining out in the dimness of midwinter. The evergreen tree itself is a symbol of hope, a reminder that life persists even in the darkest of times. And Claire has gone through some very dark times. So have we. But things are improving now, for all of us, and a Christmas tree would be an appropriate token of that, I think.”

Dean sighed. “I just—me and Sam, we’ve never _done_ Christmas. I mean, we don’t have boxes or ornaments stashed away, or strings of lights, or anything.”

“I believe such items can be obtained at Wal-Mart. I noticed them while we were buying these jeans. Plastic trees can also be purchased there.”

“Plastic?” Dean snorted. “I may not know much about Christmas, but I know you don’t get Christmas trees from Wal-Mart, buddy. If Claire really wants a tree, we’ll damn well go out into the woods behind the bunker and cut one down for her.”

“You mean it?”

Dean turned in his chair to see Claire standing at the entrance to the kitchen, beaming at him. Her long blond hair looked like rats had nested in it—she obviously took after Jimmy when it came to bedhead—and there were big dark circles under her eyes that suggested she’d stayed up late to surf the internet again, but she was grinning radiantly. She had Cas’—well, Jimmy’s—smile, and that wasn’t something Dean had ever been able to say no to.

“Um,” he said uncomfortably. Celebrating Christmas was so freakin’ _normal_ he wasn’t sure how to approach it, but he supposed it was the least they could do to make an orphaned teenager feel welcome. “Yeah, I guess. Uh, yeah. Sure.”

She bounded across the room and wrapped her arms around him. “You are the _best,_ ” she told him, and although he knew perfectly well he was being buttered up, he found it hard to mind. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he said gruffly, shrugging her off. “Have some breakfast. There’s some eggs for you on the counter.”

*****

Two hours later, Dean, Cas, and “Uncle Sammy” were staggering through the woods behind the bunker, struggling under the weight of an enormous fir tree. Sam had somehow become “Uncle Sammy” about two weeks after Claire had moved into the bunker. The two of them had grown close; they were both smart as hell, with a shared interest in weird old stories and mythology, and Claire was rapidly absorbing everything Sam could teach her about the supernatural. Dean wasn’t real thrilled about teaching her this stuff, but given that she already knew about angels and demons, it wasn’t like they had a chance of keeping her in the dark. 

He also wasn’t thrilled about the whole “Uncle Sammy” thing. He’d gotten a little disgruntled, maybe even a little jealous, a while back, and asked Sam about it.

“So how come you’re Uncle Sammy, and I’m just Dean?”

Sam had grinned.

“Because you and Cas are her dads,” he’d said. “I’m just the wacky, lovable uncle.”

Dean had decided it was wiser not to examine that too closely, and had shut up about it. But privately, he thought about it a lot. He knew that Cas had pretty much adopted Claire, and that she seemed to have accepted him. Not that Cas was ever going to replace Jimmy Novak in her heart, but at least she no longer thought of Cas as the monster who’d killed her daddy. She’d gotten to know Cas, had been saved from a dangerous situation by him, had seen him sacrifice practically everything for Dean, and had come to accept that he was a flawed but decent person.

But he wasn’t quite sure how he’d wound up being treated as Claire’s other dad. Because it was true—she hung out with Sam, watched “Lord of the Rings” with him, debated the merits of various Harry Potter characters with him, played “Portal” with him—but when she really needed advice, she came to Dean and Cas.

On some level, he was really grateful about that. Not long after he'd met Claire the second time, he'd gone berserk, under the influence of the Mark of Cain, and killed a roomful of men. And yeah, they'd all been pondscum and no one was mourning their loss, but he'd been appalled by how totally he'd lost control of himself. He hadn't just killed them; he'd slashed them to shreds. 

He himself had found the experience horrifying and traumatic, and Claire had been very understandably scared of him to begin with. And yet once the Mark had been removed and she got to know him, she'd come to accept him. She was even, he was pretty sure, fond of him.

 _Just like I was really her dad,_ he thought. 

He wasn’t totally new to the dad thing—he’d practically raised Sammy, of course, and more recently he'd been a stepdad to Ben for a year, when he’d been living with Lisa. Still, it wasn’t like he and Cas were a _couple,_ the way he and Lisa had been. He’d had to clarify that for Claire not too long after she moved in. Not long after Cas lost his grace for good, Dean had been taking care of the former angel, coddling him, really—feeding him soup and wrapping him in blankets and watching TV with him on the couch. He’d been sitting kind of close to Cas, just because he wanted to keep an eye on him and make sure he was doing okay, and Claire had wandered into the room, stopped, and studied the two of them long and hard.

“Are you guys, you know, together?”

Dean had just taken a mouthful of beer, and at her question he sputtered indignantly, spraying El Sol everywhere. “Together? What do you mean?”

“You know. Like the two of you…” She held her hands out, then pressed them together. “I mean, my dad was totally in love with my mom, and I still remember what he looked like when he was with her. The way he looked at her—I was just a kid, but I could see how much he loved her. And when Cas looks at you—"

“Whoa,” Dean said hastily. “Cas is a guy. I’m a guy.”

“So?” Claire looked at him like he was a dinosaur. He probably was. “Maybe the memo didn’t get to you in the Dark Ages, but two guys can fall in love. They can even get married, a lot of places. Just because you’re both guys—"

“Actually,” Cas put in helpfully, “I am a multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent, not a ‘guy.’ Or at least I was until last week. As an angel, I could have occupied a female vessel just as easily—and did, for a few moments, when I took over Claire years ago.”

She nodded like he’d proved her point. “So you’re bi, right?”

Cas considered that thoughtfully. “I believe the correct term would be pansexual. I am accustomed to judging people by the light of their souls, not by their physical housing. The shape of a person’s body makes little difference to me. I am only interested in what is inside. Their souls.”

Dean was growing more and more uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. “Look,” he said, a little too loudly, “the point is, we are not _together._ Okay?”

Claire had looked at him with a glint of amusement in her blue eyes, but she’d dropped the topic. But it wasn’t long after that, Dean realized, that she’d taken to calling Sam “Uncle Sammy.”

Right now Uncle Sammy was stomping cheerfully along through the snow, looking like freakin’ Paul Bunyan. Dean stumbled along behind him, wishing his brother really was Paul Bunyan so he could carry this damn tree all by himself. God knew Dean himself didn’t feel a damn thing like Paul Bunyan. He felt like a middle-aged guy with sore shoulders, a tired back, and cold feet, not to mention a red, frostbitten nose that he was pretty sure was dripping snot. 

_Christmas,_ he thought to himself with disgust. _What’s the damn point, anyway?_

He looked over his shoulder to say as much to Cas, but the words died in his mouth. Cas was just behind him, staggering beneath the weight of the tree. But Claire bounded happily along beside him, and they both wore identical happy grins despite the exertion and the cold. Dean's annoyance faded. 

_Okay,_ he thought grudgingly. _Maybe Christmas isn’t all **that** bad._


End file.
